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SCO Will Pay You Not to Use Linux
Verteiron writes: "As if things weren't weird enough already, SCO is now planning to pay companies to migrate away from Linux.. even if it's not toward UNIX. According to the summary over at Groklaw, SCO will provide 'financial incentives and discounts' to users that switch to 'other operating systems that have a stronger IP basis than Linux.' This doubly amusing when considered together with the following statements straight from SCO's 8-K form filed with the SEC:
'...plans to expand SCO's intellectual property licensing program to allow for migration alternatives to end users... and continued efforts to protect SCO's UNIX intellectual property rights and SCO's belief that the private investment will enhance SCO's ability to pursue currently pending legal actions... SCO has a history of unprofitability and has only realized revenue from its SCOsource licensing initiative during the last two quarters...'"
Use *anything* other than Linux. Note the biggest discount is Windows.
So, pay SCO only $299.00 for Linux.
But stop using Linux. Hmmm, so why the $299? Move on.
Start using Windows.
And this helps SCO how? You're not using their products. Oh, but you paid $299 for a product (Linux) they claim infringes on something of theirs, but then stop using the allegedly infringing product.
HELP!
Doing a Carrot instead of stick strategy will work a little better for SCO to accomplish their means. Granted lawyers = $500 - $2000/hr whereas user incentives = $500/user maximum (thinking Windows XP + MS office pro).
What kind of impact this will have on the Linux community that thinks they're a bunch of (every expletive you can imagine inserted here) I don't know. Anyone here in the Slashdot community who trusts SCO raise their hand.
Though all the same, some users who are looking to upgrade just might....naaah I shan't think such heretical thoughts....
...in bed
I wonder if they took into account the possibility of users switching away to another free *NIX.
Assuming they did, that makes it even more clear how much of their attack is focused on the GPL itself. BSD-licensed software may be free, but it can be added to any proprietary system with the sole provision that the copyrights are maintained and there is no warranty of fitness for any particular purpose. True "free software" is obviously what scares SCO and their puppet masters.
That's assuming they considered that possibility. Knowing how out-of-touch SCO's executives have proven themselves to be, there's a good chance they didn't.
I log onto Slashdot every day and often view these outrageous headlines about SCO. This one struck me this most. It seems to me that SCO is the Linux world equivilant of a suicide bomber, set up by "them" to bring down what could be a serious threat to the software economy. In such a high stakes game I certainly wouldnt put it past Microsoft or some other corporation to set up a dummy company to use the courts to take down their opponents. Any thoughts on this?
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
So their only income right now is that they're trying hard to sell you the product (which they hate) for $699, but at the same time they're willing to lose money if you agree to stop using it?!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If I had any money in SCO, I would want to take it out now, or be on the phone to my lawyer, looking into some sort of minority-shareholder lawsuit against the company for wasting shareholders' money by paying them to switch to a competitor's product. There is simply no financial benefit for SCO in having users switch from Linux to Windows, Solaris, or anything but a SCO product. Unless SCO has some sort of plan to move into the Windows services market (that they've kept under wraps all this time), they shouldn't be paying for people to move to Windows. It's almost enough to make me believe the SCO-Microsoft conspiracy theories.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Ah, no, this is definitely illegal. The Clayton Act, on agreement not to use goods of competitor
It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, to lease or make a sale or contract for sale of goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities, whether patented or unpatented, for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, or fix a price charged therefor, or discount from, or rebate upon, such price, on the condition, agreement, or understanding that the lessee or purchaser thereof shall not use or deal in the goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities of a competitor or competitors of the lessor or seller, where the effect of such lease, sale, or contract for sale or such condition, agreement, or understanding may be to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Every time I think 'they cannot get much worse' they go and prove me wrong. If the company was run by a single person he would be wearing a straight jacket by now. How can a group of people come up with strategy like this?
I think there will be a lot of take up from companies that were not really going to use Linux anyway and those that are going to use Linux will do so anyway.
How this will effect the standing in the coming court case is anyones guess.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Everyone I talk to says "Oh SCO has Boies, he's a great lawyer".
Then I think to myself, what has Mr. Boies done that makes him great? Let's look at his high profile cases:
1> Microsoft Anti-Trust ("won" even though MS is still a monopoly and abusing it's power more than ever, and the settlement was a weak blow off at best)
2> Gore 2000 in Florida. (LOST)
and now
SCO
So why does everyone think this kid is hot shit?
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
>[W]hy isn't the DOJ all over this like ugly on
>an ape?
What makes you so sure that anything illegal is going on? Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean the US has any grounds to make a Federal case out of it. I don't like it either, but it may very well be that everyone involved is coloring within the lines.
*Just* *barely* in the lines, maybe, but what's so obviously illegal here that you're dumbfounded?
Until someone puts on a deposition swearing that they own someone else's property, or else, reveals that they knowingly lied in court about the purloined code, there probably isn't any meat on this bone.
The stock stuff isn't anything, despite people screaming "pumpndump! pumpndump!!", it's simply legal and above the board, period.
Now if someone goes into a court room and/or makes a deposition with false statements, KNOWINGLY makes false statements, THEN you have the case that will put that individual behind bars. Won't happen though. This case isn't going to see the inside of a courtroom, period.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Since essentially SCO claims ownership of Linux (millons of lines matching bla-bla) and declared the GPL invalid it makes me wonder what rights related to the source code (Linux as 'owned by SCO) does the SCO license supposedly give to companies buying it?
Maybe someone hopes that this may be a way to use Linux source code in their proprietary OS circumventing the GPL? They need SCO to take the blame, and be able to say that they just bought a license and so their hands are clean.
Matyas
ok. let's just say sco does have ip in linux. and let's say they can bypass the gpl and charge for it. neither are likely true, but just humour me here. now let's say that they expect scosource to be their future revenue stream.
just pretend all of that is true, factual and on the level. say it's possible and what sco is honestly planning on.
how in the fuck does this latest move make any sense even in that nightmare fairie tale?
"here, you folks have violated our ip, we plan on continuing to charge you and, oh, by the way, here's some money to buy our competitors products so you won't have to pay us anymore."
is it any wonder that sco never took the unix world by storm in over a decade?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
However, IBM helped Novell buy SuSE, AG. And since Novell is the REAL owner of the UNIX IP, I am waiting on pins and needles for them to lay the smack down on the Smoking Crack Organization. Which is going to happen. Soon. That's the first thing I thought when the SuSE/Novell deal went down.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Wow. If someone came up with this story as _fiction_ no one would believe it. One can suspend dis-belief only so far, you know. This story takes the cake. (And isn't this the second SCO story today. I'm gonna need all weekend to come down from this buzz.)
Anyway, Mirco$oft has to do something; they are getting their arses handed to 'em in the "server space." (I've never been clear on how "space" differs from market, but whatever.) So stir up some really colorful FUD, and what's the worst that could happen? Although, at any moment I expect poor ESR to burst a gasket. (Not that _that_ would bother M$ much.) It is an interesting balancing act. They have to create enough noise to get heard by the mainstream press, but not enough to get the story really covered by the mainstream press; they just want the CEOs to hear that there is an "issue"; CEOs just hate "issues".
Lessee, just in the last week:
1. Bill Gates publicly admitted in an interview that Windows will never be secure without a firewall to protect it from the Internet.
2. Details about and early betas of Longhorn, Microsoft's next big Windows rewrite are the big buzz around the 'net.
3. SCO promises to pay people to switch to anything else but Linux. Here's a company that was selling an OS but bleeding money at a furious rate until they got a generous transfusion of M$ cash.
4. Red Hat, a company who worked very hard to fuse two incompatible desktop GUIs for Linux into one seemless whole, drops all support for desktop Linux and concentrates on "Enterprise" customers.
5. Someone hacked the CVS site for the Linux kernel attempting to install a vulnerability.
Hmmmm, does any of this connect for anyone else? Or just me? Where did I put that tinfoil hat?
[donning tinfoil hat]
Suppose Microsoft, having tried for years to plug the innumerable holes in their OS and failing miserably, decided to de-emphasize server support and concentrate on the desktop where their strength has always been. Red Hat decides to play nice with Microsoft by dropping all efforts at the desktop in return for which they get better cooperation (short term, naturally) from Microsoft and provide servers to Enterprises that have mainly Windows desktops right now. SCO discourages people from trying Linux the only way that hasn't been tried yet (since nothing else worked!) by actually paying people to use anything else! At the same time, tiring of predicting the infusion of Linux viruses that never occurred, some desperate Windows user actually tries to create a hole for one by sneaking source into the kernel; it doesn't work this time, hope those guys are even more vigilant now! Meanwhile, Microsoft has delayed its release of the much-hyped Longhorn for another year. Why?
I predict that all of this is just a holding action against Linux. The SCO suit is slated for a court date sometime in 2005, providing there re no more delays. Wanna bet there are? Just enough to drag it out to 2006, the release date for Longhorn. In the meantime, Red Hat will hold the line against many competing Linuxes. Concentrating the market for Enterprise servers in one company makes an easy target for Microsoft. In the meantime, Microsft has bought enough time to write many, many incompatibilities into Longhorn. When Longhorn is released, I'll bet it totally doesn't work with anything except Microsoft server software. Red Hat will be crushed, SCO will disapear and Linux will find itself trying to conform to a thousand incompatibilities in Longhorn.
[doffing tinfoil hat]
As for me, the choice of OS is easy now. After seeing Microsoft throw in the towel and seeing that virus writers are so desperate to get any virus into Linux that they actually tried to sneak bad code into the kernel to do it, Linux is the OS for me. Who knows what will happen in 3 years? Maybe there will be enough apps that I damned well don't care what windows is by then. I almost don't now.
Paul Murphy at E Commerce Times
m l
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/31932.ht
has an absolutely insane article about this whole mess. Mind you, 98% of the article is completely nuts as it basically blames IBM, or anyone else, for not paying off SCO already. He does not understand that paying off the mob is bad social policy and that Linux is about social policy, but I digress.
Here is one interesting part:
- - -
# SCO is attacking the entire Linux community.
It is not. Responses from SuSE Latest News about SuSE and Red Hat to the contrary, the SCO demand for license fees from Linux users was classic legal fiction. Both key SCO executives -- Darl McBride and Chris Sontag -- have said repeatedly that they are trying to work through issues to achieve justice without putting "a hole in the head of the penguin."
Most people find these license claims outrageous, but think about the drivers behind the demand and you might yet see SCO as a victim of its own lawyers and the way the courts operate.
Fundamentally, the court eventually will require SCO to show a quantitative, market-based derivation for the value of damages claimed. Demanding license fees is one way of establishing that basis -- and one likely to appeal to lawyers acting on contingency because a few successful sales would suffice to establish an enormous fair-market value.
- - -
Terrifyingly, this almost makes sense. If SCO can set a "high" license value on their property, they can then multiply this by the number of Linux systems to get their damages. It only takes a couple of bozos (or co-conspirators) to create "license sales" that can then be multiplied out. This is not too disimilar from the RIAA / WebCasting royalty calculations. Take what Yahoo will pay during the bubble, and then try to get everyone else to empty their pockets. It is very likely that they are not trying to actually get licenses, but that they are trying to establish a "market value" that is to their favor.
If this is actually their plan, then it is not only SCO that needs taken down, but their lawyers as well.
I've been thinking of selling SCO short, because they OBVIOUSLY cannot win this lawsuit. However ... if the endgame is that Microsoft buys SCO, then selling SCO short would be a mistake.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You don't understand. Let me explain.
For years, people like myself would complain about dos or windows, and how much software cost. And we'd here whiny assed comments about how "if you don't like it, write your own".
Do not be confused, myself, I couldn't even contribute to linux, let alone write any significant portion of it on my own. But someone did, following that sarcastic advice. And lo and behold, it was better software.
Now, we have them running scared. We're not hostages anymore. And they are doing whatever it takes, to turn back time, to when we were. If they can buy judges, laws, or legislators, they will. If they have to do a svengali on some little crackpot Utah outfit, to persuade them to be cannonfodder in this war, they will.
The thing that scares me, is what if this tactic works somehow? Everyone here bitches and moans about how it makes no logical sense, that there could be no justice in it. Me, I worry that those were never necessities in the first place, when big money is in the courtroom.
Sorry microsoft, but I like the GPL too much. I will, however, take your money....I mean SCO's money....
Seriously, would anyone be surprised if SCO started throwing around more than their $50m pocket money? That is, of course, assuming that enough companies accept this bribe to change their business processes (I won't even voice the words "To a less efficient infrastructure".....oops). How many suits without technical knowledge are not going to smell a rat here....firstly, the most efficient product is the most expensive (the proprietry unices). Then, a cheaper version comes along (altho not free for enterprise setups, as it will take a lot to convice your boss to go with debian and let you do all the support as opposed to redhat enterpise whatever and pay for phone support), and is more efficient, and the business world adjusts, after a brief "What happened to 'you get what you pay for'?". Now, if enough discounts are offered, the free unices may not be the cheapest again - but how many non-technical company executives are not going to just revert to "You get what you pay for", and how long is this voluntary profit reduction going to last? (And how many businessmen/women are not going to realise that any cost savings won't last).
Not the smartest move I have seen in this whole debacle.
Capitalists blast open source calling it communist. But I don't understand how they could be against when it lowers costs which they are always promoting . It's funny the irony.